{"id":209870,"date":"2022-04-25T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2022-04-25T11:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=209870"},"modified":"2022-04-21T09:28:21","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T08:28:21","slug":"humanity-evolving-in-spite-of-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/04\/humanity-evolving-in-spite-of-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"Humanity: Evolving in Spite of Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

20 Apr 2022 – <\/em>As wars rage, as cruelty shatters lives across the planet \u2014 as nuclear Armageddon remains a viable option for all of us \u2014 I think it\u2019s time to claim some stunning awareness in this regard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The human race is evolving in spite of itself \u2014 evolving beyond war, beyond empire, beyond dominance and conquest, and toward an uncertain but collective future. Indeed, I think most of us already know this, but only at a level so deep, so vague it feels like nothing more than \u201chope.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also another problem. Much of our world remains organized in a totally opposite way: committed, as Richard Falk<\/a> puts it in his 2013 book, (Re)Imagining Humane Global Governance<\/em>, to national policies \u201cshaped by unimaginative thinking trapped within a militarist box.\u201d Another way to put this would be: a de facto commitment to human suicide.<\/p>\n

As long as there\u2019s no serious, organized alternative to war, this is what we\u2019re going to get, which, in the wake of Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, seems suddenly clearer than it\u2019s been since, oh, 1962 (remember the Cuban missile crisis?). As long as global order, global security, is allegedly maintained with bombs and bullets and bully-swagger \u2014 and various nuclear-armed enemies occasionally challenge one another for the right to control particular swaths of the planet \u2014 we\u2019re hostage to an insanity we seem to have bequeathed ourselves.<\/p>\n

What is power? This strikes me as the key question, and untangling ourselves from the wrong answer is the beginning of the creation of real peace.<\/p>\n

When we think of power, the word itself commands that we carve the concept into something isolated and wieldable: a sword, a gun, a scepter. Power means power over. There is no basic concept of power \u2014 no word for power in the English language \u2014 that also means collaboration, collective participation: people working together, individually empowered at the same time that they are part of a larger whole.<\/p>\n

Even when we examine the dark side of power \u2014 as in, power corrupts \u2014 the examination seems to hover as a warning rather than open up to larger awareness. Consider, for instance, this 2017 article in The Atlantic by Jerry Useem<\/a>, titled (fasten your seatbelts!) \u201cPower Causes Brain Damage,\u201d which discusses a concept called \u201chubris syndrome.\u201d<\/p>\n

The article\u2019s essential point is that people who gain a significant amount of power over others lose the ability to empathize with \u2014 or mime, as the article puts it \u2014 people in general, the lesser mortals who must follow the boss\u2019s orders. This inability, it turns out, is serious. It isolates the powerful into their own stereotypes and egotistical certainties, which lessens their ability to make good, or even rational, decisions.<\/p>\n

The idea is that we\u2019re naturally connected and subconsciously \u201cmimic\u201d others: We laugh when others laugh, tense up when others grow tense. It\u2019s not faking an emotion to fit in; it\u2019s participating in \u2014 feeling \u2014 the collective emotion that fills the room. \u201cIt helps trigger the same feelings those others are experiencing and provides a window into where they are coming from,\u201d Useem writes. But: Powerful people \u201cstop simulating the experience of others,\u201d leading to what is called an \u201cempathy deficit,\u201d which saps the powerful of most, or maybe all, of their social skill, leaving them, even as they generate endless obeisance, socially isolated souls.<\/p>\n

The conclusion to be drawn here is that what is commonly thought of as power \u2014 power over others, a.k.a., dominance \u2014 isn\u2019t power at all. It\u2019s an illusion of power that weakens, and perhaps destroys, those who hold it.<\/p>\n

So does this hold true beyond the personal level \u2014 at the geopolitical level? Among countries? Well, a \u201ccountry\u201d is a created, collective entity, and may well be bound to the concept of us vs. them: intoxicated by the need for armed self-defense and, occasionally, armed conquest. Richard Falk calls this \u201chard power\u201d: dominance maintained by force and, when necessary, massacre.<\/p>\n

Is something else possible \u2014 e.g., \u201ca world order premised on nonviolent geopolitics\u201d? Falk calls this \u201csoft power\u201d \u2014 the power of working together, respecting and valuing rather than fearing one another. The way I have put it<\/a> over the years is power with<\/em> others rather than power over<\/em> them.<\/p>\n

And Falk makes a startling observation about how the world has changed since, in essence, the end of World War II. \u201cThroughout the colonial era, and until the mid-twentieth century, hard power was generally e\ufb00ective and e\ufb03cient,\u201d he notes. Heavily armed European nations tramped across the rest of the planet, claiming ownership where they felt they could.<\/p>\n

But then something changed, beginning with India\u2019s struggle for independence from Great Britain: \u201cEvery anticolonial war in the latter half of the twentieth century,\u201d Falk writes, \u201cwas eventually won by the militarily weaker side, which prevailed in the end despite su\ufb00ering disproportionate losses along its way to victory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their resistance was nonviolent and \u201cincluded gaining complete international control of the high moral ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is not a pretty story. The hard power didn\u2019t let up; it simply lost, e.g.: \u201cThe United States completely controlled land, air, and sea throughout the Vietnam war, winning every battle, and yet eventually losing the war,\u201d Falk writes, \u201ckilling as many as 4 million Vietnamese on the road to the failure of its military intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n

And despite its military dominance, despite the harm it inflicted, the U.S. has done nothing but lose wars for the last three quarters of a century. It created hell on earth for millions of people; it just didn\u2019t get its way.<\/p>\n

It has also failed to learn any lessons from its losses. The United States has refused to abandon its commitment to pointless militarism, as reflected every year in its grotesquely expanding military budgets.<\/p>\n

But change is happening nonetheless. Soft power \u2014 power with one another \u2014 is our future . . . if we have any future at all.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Robert C. Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, <\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Go to Original \u2013 commonwonders.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As wars rage, cruelty shatters lives across the planet, nuclear Armageddon remains a viable option for all of us \u2014 I think that the human race is evolving in spite of itself \u2014 evolving beyond war, empire, dominance and conquest, and toward an uncertain future. Most of us already know this, but at a level so deep, so vague, it feels like mere \u201chope.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2258,2054,307,1153],"class_list":["post-209870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism","tag-evolution","tag-human-nature","tag-humanity","tag-progress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}